Social experiences are bundles (Ricky Weekly #50)
This is where I share 3 things every week with my friends and anyone else interested.
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A picture from my life:
Took my dad voting and took this picture before the guy told me I’m not supposed to. We went Friday the first day of early voting and it was completely empty. No lines. Nada. My dad brought a pen but it was all done on tablets, a surprise to both of us. My dad had some trouble figuring out how to work the touch screens. Basic gestures like lightly tapping and UI flows like selecting an option and then tapping confirm were completely foreign to him. The tablets look great though and they all came with scanner-printers that collected your blank ballot, generated a filled out ballot for you to see, and then collected the filled out ballot. Felt like a gadget from the future. After the machine collected the ballot at the end, my dad asked, “Where did it go? How do I know if it’s counted?” He probably would want to see physical pieces of paper go into some box with a slot in the middle. Maybe show an animation like that at the end? 🤷♂️
Thing on my mind:
I took the week off, rented a car and drove down to LA, home of the 2020 World Series champions Los Angeles Dodgers! Fun fact: The Dodgers were the first MLB team to visit and play exhibition games in Taiwan, where baseball is also the national pastime. I grew up in Taiwan watching baseball on TV as a big Dodgers fan.
Every time I’m in LA I have to run a bunch of errands and solve problems for the family. This week was kind of crazy though. An hour after I arrived in LA, my dad’s doctor called to tell him he has prostate cancer, which was kind of expected for a guy his age. Went over to the doctor’s the next morning to learn more and translate for my dad, then helped him make the necessary appointments. The amount of responsibility our healthcare system places on the patient is ridiculous and basically impossible to navigate for immigrants. Fortunately my dad’s smart and self-sufficient, despite not speaking any English. I hope he stays healthy and sharp for a long time. In other news, my dad’s 1990 Lexus LS 400 finally failed the smog check and officially became a clunker, so we went to revive my brother’s old car to become his new wheels. Visited my nephews to play some basketball with them. Talked about Zoom high school a bit and applying to colleges without the SAT requirement. Poor kids they’re probably gonna spend their last year in HS at home instead of enjoying their last days with their childhood friends. I went out to Venice with my childhood friend and celebrated his birthday, and I was about to go back up to SF when my housemate texted to tell me he tested positive for Covid. I’m heading back up to SF tomorrow but staying over at my friend’s for the week to wait it out. What a week. Stay vigilant, my friends!
In the back of my head, the thing that I’ve been thinking about is how social experiences are usually “bundles.” The reason why digital social experiences tend to get tired and boring real quick is because they’re very thin bundles. Here’s an illustration I made to explain what I mean:
I highlighted “socialize with friends” because that’s the ostensible reason for all of these social experiences, yet if that was the only reason, the experience likely wouldn’t happen. A Zoom call with some lame reason is exactly that. I highlighted “eat and drink” because if the experiences involve eating and drinking, it’s often a strong enough motivator because we need to take care of our basic needs. I also highlighted “opportunity for surprises” because that’s really hard to create digitally (credit to David for pointing this out, but honestly David can claim credit to all of my thoughts). IRL is full of surprises. When my friends and I were walking around in Venice this weekend, we heard a giant explosion really close to us, turned around, and saw a parked car smoking and a guy running away. It was kind of a scary surprise but a story I can tell y’all now. That kind of stuff rarely happens online. What is unique in digital spaces though is the ability to experience scale, and the second-order effect is the ability to quickly accumulate a “following” or social capital. That’s why Eugene Wei thinks “status” is the most important axis in digital social products (the other two being “entertainment” and “utility”). I think this idea of social experiences as bundles is useful in figuring out how you would create a rich digital social experience.
Piece of content I recommend:
Episode 410: Jiayang Fan - Longform Podcast
This podcast had me screaming AMEN the whole time I was listening because of how accurately she described the Chinese-American experience living in this country. I dunno how to sell it to you, so here’s an excerpt:
“The story explores how just as important as physical survival was this idea of the Chinese concept of mianzi (面子), which is a combination of social standing and face-saving. My only goal during my April Twitter campaign was to save my mother’s life, but in the back of my head was this fear of betraying her of putting such humiliating details of her life—pictures of her present predicament on the Internet and how that can devastate her.” Jiayang Fan
Bonus: Early Work by Paul Graham
I loved how PG spelled out exactly how Silicon Valley works. Why founders need to be slightly overconfident and paint very ambitious narratives, why we operate in constant beta, why we don’t rush to judge or condemn a project, etc. Basically, they’re all in service of creating new and awesome things!
🤗
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As always, you can find out what I’m thinking in more real-time on Twitter and my essays are on my website. My latest essay is called “All social media is now parasocial.”